By Abby Sewell, Medill News Service
WASHINGTON — Two or three times a week, truck driver Jesus Serrano hauls loads of Mexican-grown produce from warehouses in Nogales, Ariz., which is just across the U.S.-Mexico border, to distribution centers in Los Angeles.
Serrano plans to stop making the trip now that Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a stringent anti-illegal immigration bill into law, however, and he's recruited other truckers to join him.
Serrano, the independent owner-operator of a Los Angeles-based trucking company, said that about 70 drivers based in California and Arizona had agreed to stop moving loads into or out of Arizona in protest of the new law. He hopes to get 200 truckers on board for a five-day boycott that will start within 48 hours of the bill's signing.
Brewer signed the bill Friday, over protests from groups that are concerned about potential racial profiling and other issues. The Arizona Senate had passed the measure Monday after the state House of Representatives OK'd it last week.
The law will require police to check the immigration status of anyone they have "reasonable suspicion" to think might be in the country illegally.
As a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, Serrano said, he was disturbed when he heard last week that the Arizona House had passed the bill. He began talking to other independent truckers who drive the Nogales-to-Los Angeles circuit, and they planned the boycott over CB radios, on cell phones and at truck stops, Serrano said.
"We're Hispanic; we're Mexican. We've been saying, 'Are we going to be getting stopped on our way to the store when we're walking to get lunch somewhere?' " Serrano said.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/23/1595322/some-truckers-plan-boycott-over.html#ixzz0m4LDtxbr
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